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CincyTriGuy
Known Participant
October 9, 2017
Answered

Possible to create a smart collection for damaged photos?

  • October 9, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 793 views

I just moved a catalog from my old MacBook Pro to a new one. In the process I came across a collection that has a couple dozen damaged photos. The photos have an exclamation point and say "Lightroom has encountered problems reading this photo".

I just happened to see these photos during the move process, but my catalog has over 40,000 images in it. I have offline backups of the images so it wouldn't be a huge deal to restore those files from my backup, re-import them, then delete the damaged files. But the issue of course is, how do I know I've found all the damaged photos? Creating a smart collection would be ideal but I can't find anything that I could filter off. Any thoughts?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer johnrellis

    Some experimentation suggests that a library filter or smart collection searching for a Metadata Status of Unknown will find photos that have the "problems" badge:

    This may not find all such files until you force LR to check explicitly the status of all your files.  LR appears to check the status of a file in background whenever the file modification date changes, but if that date hasn't changed (e.g. because of disk or software failure of some sort), LR won't have a reason to check the file.  

    More experimentation suggests that selecting all photos and doing Metadata > Save Metadata To File forces LR to check, but at the expense of modifying all of your non-raws and the .xmp sidecars of all the raws.

    You might be able to avoid that mass modification of your files by instead making a backup copy of your catalog, opening the backup copy, selecting all photos, and doing Metadata > Read Metadata From File.  When you're finished identifying the corrupted photos and restoring them from backup, revert back to using your original catalog.  (I haven't tested this procedure to verify that Read Metadata From File actually forces LR to check the file status.)

    2 replies

    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 9, 2017

    There is no smart collection or filter for damaged photos with the message you quoted. Put them in a regular collection, or add a keyword that can be tracked by a smart collection. Best of all, each time you find one go to your backup and restore the file manually. And see if you can identify why this corruption happened.

    johnrellis
    johnrellisCorrect answer
    Legend
    October 9, 2017

    Some experimentation suggests that a library filter or smart collection searching for a Metadata Status of Unknown will find photos that have the "problems" badge:

    This may not find all such files until you force LR to check explicitly the status of all your files.  LR appears to check the status of a file in background whenever the file modification date changes, but if that date hasn't changed (e.g. because of disk or software failure of some sort), LR won't have a reason to check the file.  

    More experimentation suggests that selecting all photos and doing Metadata > Save Metadata To File forces LR to check, but at the expense of modifying all of your non-raws and the .xmp sidecars of all the raws.

    You might be able to avoid that mass modification of your files by instead making a backup copy of your catalog, opening the backup copy, selecting all photos, and doing Metadata > Read Metadata From File.  When you're finished identifying the corrupted photos and restoring them from backup, revert back to using your original catalog.  (I haven't tested this procedure to verify that Read Metadata From File actually forces LR to check the file status.)

      C
      CincyTriGuyAuthor
      Known Participant
      October 9, 2017

      Thanks for the helpful reply! I've just started doing some initial testing based on your response and I think I can get to where I want to be with this info. Thanks!

      Mohit Goyal
      Community Manager
      Mohit GoyalCommunity Manager
      Community Manager
      October 9, 2017

      Hi CincyTriGuy,

      Please refer the related discussion: Is there a filter for "missing photos"?

      Regards,

      Mohit

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